Slideshow: A Day at the NY Auto Show

I recently spent the day at the New York International Auto Show, held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. I’ve heard that upward of a million people attend this event. I was there on Media Day, which is the day before the show opens to the public, so I had pretty good access to all the cars. Here you’ll see some of the highlights and other interesting things I came across. The wackiest of the photos, the last one, was taken outside the convention center.

Click on the photo to start the slideshow.

This photo by itself isn’t all that interesting, as it shows the 2015 (yes, 2015) Volkswagen Golf under a cover. What’s cool about this is that they projected images onto the cover, and you’d think you were looking at the real thing, as you can see in the next image.

I'd like to try the LaneWatch camera, Rich. I, too, wonder about its intuitiveness. In terms of intutiveness, I hope it's better than Cadillac's old night vision technology from a few years back, which was not easy to use and bombed in the market.

Charles, I do not understand the need for this technology. If mirrors are set correctly, there is no blind spot. If one can see the sides of your own vehicle, then they aren't set properly.

Properly set mirrors show a car approaching in the center rear view mirror. As it disappears from the rear view mirror, it is just appearing in the side view mirror. As it disappears from that mirror, the nose of the car is in your peripheral vision. Where's the blind spot? The car was in continuous view.

I couldn't agree more about properly setting your mirrors to remove blind spots. I also put small convex mirrors in the corners of my mirrors and you can use those as a quick look reference. It takes a little getting used to the mirrors in the new positions, but once you understand how to use them and how much safer it is, you'll never go back. I showed my wife and now she insists on the same mirror setup. You'll never need to crank your neck around to look behind you again! And at this point, I would rather have set my mirrors and add on two $2 mirrors than pay for some $3k non-intuitive camera system.

I see that several companies have finally started to add in the additional mirror as part of the standard package. Very nice!

Looking at the Rolls Royce and noticing how the door opens the opposite of what we're used to brings back memories of terror. The rear doors on our 1948 Packard were hinged on the rear. The door was a bit ajar, and I wanted to close it. Being very young, I didn't know that opening it and hanging onto the door handle would fling me into oncoming traffic. I trust they have adequate safeguards built into this modern vehicle.

I learned to drive in my all-time dream car, a 1959 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special Sedan. 390 ci 325 hp, air conditioning, air suspension, stereo FM radio, and dashboard dial controlled cruise control. All leading edge at the time, and oh, what a boat.

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